Stuff we’ve missed

From: Rachel Giese
To: CBCNews.ca Arts feature writers: Andre Mayer, Martin Morrow & Katrina Onstad
Subject: Stuff we’ve missed

Hey guys,

This summer marked the end of two of the biggest pop culture phenomena of our time: the Harry Potter series and The Sopranos. I’m a little obsessed with the former — thanks again for your indulgence of my Pottermania. But despite it being anointed as The Great American Novel (on TV), I just never got The Sopranos. Mafia culture doesn’t interest me; then, by the time I decided I should check it out, I was too far behind to catch up. This was before I was hip to PVRs and BitTorrent — was anyone ever so young?

I’ve been thinking about my other blind spots, pop culture touchstones that I have wilfully or ignorantly missed out on. Confession time: I’ve never seen a single episode of Lost (that’s the one where Charlie from Party of Five is stuck on an island with a Hobbit, right?) for the same reason I passed on The Sopranos. Serial dramas have revolutionized television storytelling, but their intricate plots can make weekly viewing feel like an obligation, not a pleasure. Miss one episode and you’re out of the loop.

There is no good excuse, however, for one particular gap in my pop culture education. How is it that I’ve seen Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from Shanghai, The Third Man and Touch of Evil, but never Citizen Kane? Shameful. On the other hand, it’s a matter of pride that I didn’t see Titanic. Celine Dion plus James Cameron is the cinematic equivalent of waterboarding: I’ll confess to anything, just please make it stop!

I hate to say it, but it’s pure prejudice that’s prevented me from reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. After slogging through Dave Eggers too-precious A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Jonathan Franzen’s self-important The Corrections, I just couldn’t stomach another overstuffed, ironic, post-modern “masterpiece from the voice of his generation.”

Is it unfair to lump Wallace and Foer with Eggers and Franzen just because they’re all clever-clever guys of a certain class, race and aesthetic who happen to share first names? Absolutely. I’m not proud of my bias. But life is too short to spend it reading David Foster Wallace’s footnotes.

OK, before I lose all my credibility as an arts journalist, I’m going to pass this along to you three. What are your pop culture oversights? What hit films, Top 40 songs, best-selling books and water-cooler TV shows have you ignored?

Rachel

From: Andre Mayer
To: Rachel Giese, Martin Morrow & Katrina Onstad
Subject: Re: Stuff we’ve missed

“Life is too short to spend it reading David Foster Wallace’s footnotes.” There was a time, Rachel, when I would have found that statement outrageous, if not downright seditious. I’m calmer now. While Infinite Jest would still be a desert-island pick for me (gratuitous Lost reference), I understand and respect your decision not to crack its considerable spine. That whole post-modern prose posse has a tendency to overreach. While my own appetite for that sort of thing has waned since the late ’90s, I unabashedly love all the novels you mentioned — except for the Eggers book, which I admired more than enjoyed.

Daniel Radcliffe is Harry Potter in the popular film series. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

I’ll use your mention of the Harry Potter series to segue into one of my blind spots: the Harry Potter series. I say that with no shame whatsoever. The main reason I haven’t read a single word of J.K. Rowling’s oeuvre is that I don’t enjoy fantasy — at least not as a literary genre. It’s just too fanciful and precious; I prefer fiction based in reality. I gather that Rowling’s books are infused with important themes, and I’m genuinely glad that the books have mobilized so many readers, particularly young 'uns. But I, myself, refuse to bite. In fact, the pile-up of Potter books and movies (and accompanying merchandise) has only strengthened my resolve.

Indeed, in some cases, a cultural blind spot evolves from mere ignorance to wilful abstention. Your cluelessness becomes a badge of honour; you steer clear on principle. In addition to Harry Potter, I’ve waged a campaign of avoidance on The Lord of the Rings. I haven’t read any of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, have seen none of Peter Jackson’s fulsome movie adaptations — and under no circumstances will you ever catch me humming the libretto to the musical. It’s the fantasy thing again, and what I perceive to be a dire lack of humour. But more importantly, I’m bandwagon-averse.

That’s not to say I don’t feel some remorse for things I’ve missed. One book I’m ashamed of never having read is Lord of the Flies. You’re probably wondering how I could have missed that seminal text in high school. (I’ll tell you: we squandered valuable class time deconstructing The Stone Angel!) Ready for another ignominious confession? I haven’t seen any of the following ’80s comedies: Meatballs, the Porky’s series, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I missed out on so many uproarious but important life lessons that could have gotten me through puberty! Curses!

A

From: Martin Morrow
To: Rachel Giese, Andre Mayer & Katrina Onstad
Subject: Re: Stuff we’ve missed

Andre, you won’t catch anyone humming the libretto to the Lord of the Rings musical. But I know what you mean about wilful abstention: I've wilfully abstained from immersing myself in the Gene Roddenberry-constructed universe that is Star Trek since childhood. I didn't watch the original series, or The Next Generation and the many other spinoffs, I've never seen the movies — and yet I don't consider myself clueless.

Sometimes a work of popular entertainment is so enduring (and Star Trek made its TV debut in 1966) that it gets under a culture’s skin, we absorb it by osmosis even if we refuse to take it in its direct forms. So I can’t help but be familiar with warp speed, phasers and transporters; I know what a Vulcan is, and a Klingon, and if surrounded by a pack of wild-eyed Trekkies (OK, poor metaphor — they’re really a rather benign bunch) I can bluff my way out by spreading my middle fingers and declaring, “Live long and prosper.” Now, those same Trekkies might tell me that I have nothing more than a surface knowledge of their magnificent obsession, and that’s not the same as appreciating the deeper meaning of Roddenberry’s work. But I have a hunch that, at this point, there’s nothing about the human condition Star Trek can tell me that I haven’t already picked up in, say, Shakespeare or Proust.

From left, Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) and Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in Star Trek. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

That’s the widest chink in my pop-culture armour, but there are others. The recent release of Prince’s new album reminded me again that I’ve ignored him shamefully since — I blush to admit it — When Doves Cry. His Purpleness has such a massive back catalogue now that I wouldn’t know where to start making his re-acquaintance. And speaking of The Stone Angel, as a good Canadian I regularly flagellate myself for not being as intimately familiar with the CanLit canon as I ought to be — but then again, in my career as a theatre critic I’ve seen and read heaps of new Canadian plays, so I figure I’ve done my patriotic duty.

The fact is, it’s just about impossible to be plugged in to all the phenomena all the time — sometimes you have to pick and choose. Rachel, you cast your lot with Harry Potter, while I chose to hang with sordid Tony Soprano and his egregiously dysfunctional clan. The consolation is that the great stuff doesn’t age and you can always discover it later on. Citizen Kane is just waiting for that night when you’ve got some microwave popcorn and a couple of free hours — and don’t be put off just because you already know its long-spoiled ending (which Welles famously dismissed as “rather dollar-book Freud”), it’s a treat on many other levels.

But Katrina, it’s your turn: what’s your cultural Achilles heel?

From: Katrina Onstad
To: Rachel Giese, Andre Mayer & Martin Morrow
Subject: Re: Stuff we’ve missed

First of all, you just had to mention Proust, didn’t you, Martin? Your show-off name-checking does, for once, serve a purpose, illustrating the distinction between high and low cultural blindspots. Missing out on, say, American Idol is different from a decades-long staredown with an uncracked two-volume set of Remembrance of Things Past (next summer, I promise). Allan Bloom, E.D. Hirsch and other (usually) conservative grumblers have bemoaned the erosion of cultural literacy for decades now, but they’re talking about a threat to the intellectual fortitude of future generations, not whether or not you know who coined the phrase “That was a little pitchy for me.”

Roundabout way of saying: I can’t do these talent shows. Not American Idol, not So You Think You Can Dance, not American Inventors, which seems like a particularly vicious fifth grade science fair without the Spellbound-like sweetness (an impression based on ads). This brand of reality TV reminds me of television before television got good, before E.R. and HBO and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Why do I want to see mediocre people being mediocre in fields where excellence is widely available? Even as a 70s child with four channels, I would choose the tenth Circle of Hell-level boredom offered by The Rene Simard Show to Circus and Battle of the Network Stars, shows that featured lame celebrities juggling or jousting above swimming pools. Luckily — or not — I work in an office where two of my colleagues, who shall remain nameless (hi, Rachel and Andre) deconstruct So You Think You Can Dance for hours at a time. They also taught me about “pitchy” and “dawg.”

Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer in the TV series 24. (Fox/Associated Press)

Which is to say: I agree, Rachel, that it’s amazing how one can erase a blindspot these days with so little effort. Wikipedia, YouTube, and the endless water-cooler Us magazine cross-referencing chatter (hmm, maybe Hirsch is right) makes pop instantaneously absorbable. Just by reading mainstream newspapers, it’s possible to “pass” as a Jack Bauer expert without ever having seen 24. And I haven’t seen 24, because those shows require a level of commitment that I can barely promise to my family. I have children. I have a life, and I find this new breed of serials hostile to my reality. If I tune out for a week, I don’t want to find out that suddenly, the castaways have a condo underground, which is what happened on Lost — I think.

But why do I — maybe we, fellow e-mailers? — take a perverse pride in my pop culture blindspots? I was backpacking in Asia the year Twin Peaks took off. In a café in India, I learned from a dog-eared Time magazine (this was pre-net) that North America was caught up in a Peaks frenzy. I remember consciously thinking: I have missed out on this phenomenon, and that makes me unique. So I never watched it.

With pop culture, everyone wants to be an early adopter. If you can’t be the one who discovered the latest thing, then best opt out to retain some fantasy of above-the-trend street cred. Or, once something reaches a media saturation point, declare it over. I feel this way about Amy Winehouse. I have never heard her sing but I know way too much about her and her drunken beehive, and I’m on the cusp of consciously avoiding her for life.

The thing is: Maybe I’d like Amy Winehouse. I liked the description of her voice the first time I read about it, months ago, before the Winehouse onslaught. The dark side of this conversation, then, is that our blindspots can cement into our identities, and we miss out on some great stuff. For years, I hadn’t seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. I liked how this separated me from the crowd (and irritated boyfriends). But the thing is, I finally saw it, and it was unequivocally great.

So, Rachel: Please see Citizen Kane. I will rent The Searchers (shameful, I know, but I have a John Wayne blindspot) the same night. Years ago, Dave Eggers, who I think is great for the world — and I like all the po-mo Daves, though I haven’t read Infinite Jest either — responded to a painfully cool interviewer at the Harvard Advocate with a fantastic essay in which he vehemently proposed saying “yes” to all the things we think might “[damage] our downtown reputations.” No more blindspots like: I loved early R.E.M., but I stopped when they sold out. No more narrowing of experience. In other words: Think of what we’re missing!

That said, I’m pretty sure that American Idol sucks.